Wednesday, January 6, 2010

The first cave project: building a cave.

As I was driving to work Monday, I saw a cane dome (from an old chair) on my neighbors curb. During the day I realized this was a perfect top for a cave. I was in luck. When I got home it was still there. Obviously, no one else saw the great potential in this item.

Now, I had the top. What next?

Turn it over to the children, of course! And they came through with flying colors. Sydney came up with the first idea for the construction.

"We could put the top on stools." The children rushed to take down the stools and placed them in a circle. As this was happening, children were talking to each other and agreed the dome needed to be covered with a blanket. Joanna came in the room at this point and said she had blankets in the office. The blankets didn't cover all the gaps so they grabbed their pillows and some scarves to put around the sides. Someone grabbed the old "camel hump" and transformed it for another life as a rock next to the cave. And...

Voila! A cave!

As the children took turns entering the cave there were exclamations of awe and glee.

"It's really like a cave."

"It very dark."

"We could be bears living in this cave."

"It's kind of scary."

As we continue to learn about caves, I anticipate several metamorphosis of the cave. Natalie has already suggested making tissue ghosts to hang inside.

More soon on our adventures in speleology. ( If you are uncertain of the meaning of speleology, ask your child and see if they can remember.) We will be learning a lot of new vocabulary in this unit.)